First comicon attended, and mission accomplished! The mission was to meet and talk to independent self-publishing comicbook writers and yes I met several. They are doing just what I want to do – sell out small runs of the comic book and hope to get lucky. The right story at the right time, and you get to do it as a living, with no day-job.
I also talked to some writers and artists who do it as a day-job and one thing they had to say was ‘DEADLINES.’ I complimented one artist at having beaten out the competition and working for one of the big comic-book franchises. His answer was that the real challenge isn’t making it in, but staying, and it’s all about brutal deadlines. When you’re young, he said, you can pull all-nighters and make that deadline, but now he’s getting into, gosh, I’d say at least late ’20s or early ’30s, he doesn’t have the will to stay up all night finishing artwork. Now he misses deadlines and doesn’t know how much longer he can go on doing it at all.
YET ANOTHER REASON SELF-PUBLISHING IS THE WAY TO GO! Yes I have to do all the work. All the work. But if I miss a deadline I don’t get fired. And I can set the deadline anyway.
